Heard on "The People's Court"

[Brenda Lester]

A parting expression down South is, "I'll yell at you later." I've never heard "talk at."
  Depends where you are in Dixie, y'all.


Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
  I've heard "talk at" (=talk to) a number of times here in Dixie, without any obvious reference to condescension. It isn't common in my experience, however.

JL

Wilson Gray wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Heard on "The People's Court"
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Spoken by a black? Latin? black Latin? plaintiff:

"My sister came _at_ me and aksed me to watch her kids for her."

Though she did say, once, "... came _to_ me ..., " she used "... came
at me ..." about a dozen times.

I really hope that this use of "at" doesn't catch on. AFAIK, languages
that distinguish "[verb of motion] at" (threatening) from "[verb of
motion] to" (non-threatening) in the way that English does are rare.

-Wilson
--
There's only one thing that money can't buy and that's poverty.

-Jack Benny

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